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OF 



RICHAED YEADON, ESQ., 



O F 



CHARLESTON, S. C, 



AT THE 



PILGRIM CELEBRATION, 



AT 



PLYMOUTH, MASS, 



AUGUST 1, 1853. 



Extract from the Boston Courier, August 5th, 1853, 

" On the first page we have placed the patriotic speech of M^. Yeadou, at 
the Pilgrim Dinner, at Plymouth, on the 1st instant, which speecli was compli- 
mented by hisses from certain crazy and rabid abolitionists." 



NEW YORK: 



PRINTED Br G. TREHERN, lil NASSAU STREET, 



1853. 



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SPEECH OF MR. YEADON, 

AT THE fj /■•* C j^' 

Pilg^rim Celebration at Plymouth. 

AUGUST 1, 1853. 



After Mr. Everett had ended his eloquent address, and the 
admirable letter of Mr. Winthrop had been read, Richard 
Warren, Esq., the President of the Pilgrim Society, and of 
the day, announced the following toast : 

" South Carolina — We welcome her sous to the birth-place of New 

Euglaud." 

The loud cheering, with which this sentiment was received, 
having subsided, the President introduced Richard Yeadon, 
Esq., of South Carolina, one of the Editors and proprietors of 
the Charleston Courier, to the company, and called on him to 
respond. Mr. Yeadon accordingly responded as follows : 

Descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers ! — The distinguished and 
generous compliment, just paid to the State of South Carolina, 
and the enthusiastic manner ia which it has been received, by 
this vast and patriotic throng, devolve on me, in the opinion of 
my fellow South Carolinians here present, the office and the 
duty of attempting to make a suitable response. In memory, 
however, of the noble and classic strains of eloquence, which 
have just rolled from distinguished New England lips, and 
ravished New England ears and hearts, this day — those strains 
(pointing to Mr. Everett), which are only comparably, to the 
music of the spheres, and lips which, like those of tlie holy 
prophets of old, may justly be styled lips of fire — I almost 
shrink appalled from the task, and dread to mingle the feeble 
and discordant notes of my penny whistle Avith the trumpet 



2' 



ifones and rich harmonies of illustrious speakers, worthy of the' 
Athenian rostrum, or the Roman Senate, in their palmiest days, 
(Applause.) But never shall it be said that the Palmetto Fort 
failed to respond to Bunker Hill, either in the interchange of 
the friendly salute, or in the discharge of voUied thunder and 
iron hail, against the common foes of our common country. 
Like the gallant and lamented Butler, the commander and the 
hero of the ever glorious Palmetto regiment, I must not, and 
will not, shun a place in the picture, though it be near the- 
flashing of the guns. (Applause.) 

Sons of the Pilgrim Sires ! — I feel honored in my associa- 
tion with you, this day, in the festive, although temperate, cele- 
bration of an event, than which none more important, in its 
bearings on human destiny, is chronicled on the historic page.- 
It is the departure of your pilgrim fathers and your pilgrim 
mothers, from Delft Haven, on the 1st of August, 1620, in that 
frail and often imperilled bark, the Mayflower, under the guid- 
ance of their pastor and of their God, to seek religious and 
establish civil liberty, in the wilderness of America — to found,, 
on an eternal rock, the rock of truth and reason, externally 
symboUed by the Plymouth Rock, near which we now reve- 
rentially and joyously stand — a new empire of freedom, des- 
tined to solve successfully the problem of popular self-govern- 
ment, and to surpass, in extent of territorial domain, in great- 
ness and glory, and in the production of the greatest good tO' 
the greatest number, all other empires, ancient or modern^, 
which history records in her instructive annals, or which yet 
play their parts on the grand theatre of national existence. 
Descended, as I am maternally, and as numbers of my fellow 
South Carolinians are, either paternally or maternally, from 
Huguenot ancestors, who fled from even greater persecutions 
than did your Puritan fathers, and encountered equal perils and 
made equal sacrifices, with them, for religion and liberty, I can 
fully sympathize and fraternize in feeling, in principle, and in 
hopij, with this multitudinous concourse of worthy sons, assem- 
bled to do honor and reverence to worthy sires — decked and 
crowned as it is with the beaming presence of the lovely 
daughters of the Pilgrim mothers. 



Permit me, fellow citizens of Massachusetts, to seize tHs 
•occasion, for the purpose of twining a common garland in ho- 
nor of tht illustrious and now immortal trio, who, after serving 
their common country, with an extent and variety of service, 
that made them and her glorious, have gone, successively and at 
short intervals, to the grave, to be mourned by their mother 
States with a domestic and a hearthstone grief — a sorrow, like 
that of Rachel for her first born, refusing to be comforted ; by 
sister States, also, with responsive sympathy, and by the nation 
at large, as bereft at once of her brightest and most cherished 
jewels, and her strongest and noblest pillars. 

Clay, Webster, and Calhoun were, beyond all comparison, 
the three men of America ; and long, if ever, will it be, ere three 
stars, equal in magnitude and lustre, will be again seen culmi' 
nating at the same time on our national meridian. The simili- 
tudes and affinities in their gifts, history, and career, are nu- 
merous and striking. They were not far removed from each 
■other in age, and they came very nearly at the same time on 
■the arena of public and political life. Each, in the very in- 
cipiency of his public career, was recognized as an intellectual 
Hercules, and sprang, at a single bound, to the loftiest emi- 
nence. Each, while living, was the most cherished son of his 
particular State ; and, now that all of them are tenants of the 
grave, neither of their mother States would exchange her dead 
Ossory for any living son in Christendom. Each, in his own 
section, stood without compeer in greatness, and in the popular 
affection ; yet each was regarded as the common property of 
the republic, rendering her illustrious service in the Senate, in 
4he Cabinet, and in the field of diplomacy ; influencing her 
■measures and her destiny, by their sage counsels, in peace and 
in war ; identified with her history and her onward march, and^ 
•in a large measure, constituting her fame. (Applause.) They 
•all alike towered above the men of their country, and of their 
'times, as moral and intellectual pyramids — intellectual giants, 
not among intellectual pigmies, but in the midst of an intellec- 
itual and enlightened generation. 

They were, alike, orators, patriots and statesmen, of the first 
^order, standing high in the admiration, esteem and veneration., 



and held dear to the hearts of their countrymen, and they lived 
only to serve and bless their country. They were all indeed 
her benefactors, while living ; and, in death, theirs is a glory, 
far beyond that which streams from the mausoleum of the vic- 
torious warrior ; for their laurels are unstained with blood, and 
unmoistened with widows' and orphans' tears, — composed of, 
or at least entwined with the blessings of a grateful country — 
and their monument is that country itself, in all its high and 
palmy prosperity, in all its magnitude ol territorial extent, in 
all Its auguries of a future, beyond all parallel in the past, and 
likely to keep pace with tlie wildest hopes and dreams of the 
most excited fancy. 

INot only was each of the glorious triad the popular favorite, 
in his own State and section ; but they bore identical relations 
to City, State, section and nation. Boston, the Athens of 
America, Massachusetts, the cradle of the Revolution, New- 
England, the home of the Pilgrim Fathers, delighted to do 
honor to — nay, almost worshipjied Daniel Webster, as " the 
bright Star of the East" — lavishing on him, " gifts, gold, frank- 
incense and myrrh". Lexington, the seat of hospitality and 
intelligence, Kentucky, the eldest of the Western sisterhood of 
States, the far and mighty West, in all its prairied vastness, 
presented the laurel to Henry Clay, as the great Statesman of 
the West. Charleston, the Queen City of the South, South- 
Carolina, the native soil of the ever-green and ever-glorious 
Palmetto, the South — the sunny South — the home of chivalry 
and generous sentiment — did homage to John C. Calhoun, the 
pure and lofty patriot, the fearless champion of Southern rights 
and Southern honor. At home, each towered in unriv^alled 
greatness ; yet, when viewed, on the national plain, they rose 
in the similitude of three lofty and colossal columns, contrasted 
in their architecture, but equal in magnitude and height. 

Each aspired to the chief magistracy of the republic, seek- 
ing the noble end by noble means, and with motives "that make 
ambition virtue ;" and each alike failed to win the noble and 
glittering prize — each alike deserving, although not command- 
ing success. There was, perhaps, too, a similarity in the rea- 
sons or causes of their common failure. Clay, when about to 



make his great anti-abolition speech, in the Senate of 183S, 
was warned by a gifted Senator from South Carolina — the 
Hon. Wm. C. Preston — that, with his well-known opinions on 
the question of slavery, and in view of his aspirations for the 
Presidency, it would be as well not unnecessarily to offend the 
■abolitionists ; but the prompt and decisive answer of the great 
Kentuckian and patriotic American was — " I would rather be 
risfht than be President"; and the abolitionists became thence- 
forward his bitterest foes, and in all probability prevented his 
election to the Presidency in the subsequent contest with Mr> 
Polk. We learn, from a correspondent of the New York Herald, 
describing the eloquent and classical eulogy of the accom- 
plished Choate, v/orthy to take its place in the richest casket 
and among the brightest gems of English oratory and English 
literature, that a similar incident adorns the history and illus- 
trates the character of the illustrious Webster. When warned 
that his patriotic and constitutional course, on the compromise 
of 1850, would endanger his prospects for the chief magistracy 
of the nation, "with his great eyes glowing, and the very light- 
ning flashing from his face," his answer was — " I would not 
swerve a hair for the Presidency." So, too, Calhoun, by the 
stiffness of his unpopular opinions on the subject of State rights, 
and especially the Roman firmness of his opinions on the great 
and absorbing question of Southern rights, interposed the chief 
barriers to his success as an aspirant for the Presidency. But, 
although they all stood alike excluded, by their very greatness, 
from the Presidential chair, every one agrees that they wanted 
nothing earthly to complete their fame ; that they would have 
been more honoring than' honored in wearing the Presidential 
laurel, and that, as " Senators in the Senate House," they were 
as suns, in the political firmament, eclipsing, in lustre and in 
glory, the lesser fires that have twinkled their feeble radiance 
from the highest place of the republic. That there were diver- 
sities between them, in the structure of their minds, in the 
character of their intellectual endowments, in their mental ha- 
bitudes, in their range of knowledge, and in their order and 
style of speaking and of eloquence, cannot be doubted ; but, 
wherever they differed, it was as one star differeth from another 



^XiCt in glory. — Webster was unrivalled as a logician, a rlielO* 
5fician and constitutional lawyer ; Clay, as an orator and prac 
lical Statesman, able and accustomed to sway, almost at will, 
the passions and actions of men ^ Calhoun, as a philosopher, 
sounding and probing, to their profoundest depths, all the great 
•questions, which involved the interests of his coimtry, or the 
destinies of his race. 

Each was a practical farmer, fond of rural elegance and rural 
pursuits, and skilled in agricultural science — Calhoun, at Fort 
Hill, his elegant and well-ordered mountain farm ^ Clay, amid 
the shades and rural wealth of his beautiful and romantic Ash- 
land ; and Webster, at his cherished Marshfield farm, encir- 
cled by agricultural abundance, reposing from the cares of 
State, and literally and habitually dispensing neighbourly kind- 
ness and elegant hospitality. 

Similar as they were in their lives, in death they were not 
far divided, and they met the final doom of mortality in very 
similar circumstances — -each dying at the post of duty, and in 
the harness of the Republic — two of them at the national capi- 
tal, and the third, during an intended temporary absence trom 
it, but while yet charged with the cares of the nation. It is 
recorded, in Holy Writ, that " The glory of the terrestrial is 
one, and the glory of the celestial is another," and these illus- 
trious compeers, having co-equally participated in the one, in 
this mundane sphere, may we not piously indulge the hope that 
they are now rejoicing and beatified participants in the other — 
in the heavenly courts — the empyrean realms above? 

Before closing my remarks, so inadequate to this great and 
interesting occasion, I cannot forbear doing reverence to the 
manes and the shade of the illustrious Webster, for his consti- 
tutional fidelity to the South. I ask the indulgence of the nicet» 
ing, on this subject, even at the hazard of trespassing on deli- 
cate ground. I mean not to cast an apple of discord into this 
harmonious and joyous assemblage; but I would not be just to 
myself, nor true to my section, were I not to embrace the oppor- 
tunity to do grateful reverence to the illustrious dead, and the 
illustrious living, who have nobly and fearlessly done amstitu- 
•iiaraaZ justice to the South. Mr. Webster's truth and iideJity, 



to the South, sprang from principle as well as feeling, and wag 
imbibed from parental instruction ; and it is no wonder that the 
boy who first, read and studied the constitution of his country 
on a cotton handkerchief, should have been unswerving and 
faithful in oiving the full benefit of that constitution to the cotton 
States of the South and West. It was under this hallowed in- 
fluence that, at Richmond, in 1840, he made the memorable de- 
claration, that, " in the capital of the Old Dominion, under the 
October sun of a Virginia sky, he gave it to the wings of all the 
winds, to be borne to every corner of the Republic, and to 
every human ear, whether of iriend or I'oe, of North or South, 
on all the respunsihility that belonged to him, that there is no 

power, DIRECT OR INDIRECT, IN CoNGRESS OR THE GENERAL 

Government, to interfere, in the slightest degree, 
WITH the Institutions of the South"; and it was in the 
same spirit that he took that noble stand, in 1850, which saved 
his country from fraternal strife and civil war — and the Union 
from dissolution. (Hisses and applause.) And, while thus, 
as a Southerner, rendering homage to the illustrious dead, let 
me also do homage to the illustrious living, and return my grate- 
ful thanks to the great speaker of the day, the gifted, the glori- 
ous Everett, (Webster's worthy successor in the cabinet and in 
the Senate chamber,) for the declaration and sentiment, uttered 
by him in Congress, many, many, years ago, but still indelibly 
impressed on my memory, — " There is no cause in which I 
would more readily shoulder a musket, than to put down a ser- 
vile insurrection in the South." (Applause.) 

Let me here, too, relate an anecdote or an incident, con- 
nected with the great Carolinian, and his love and admiration 
for Massachusetts and Boston. It was in my last conversation 
with him, just before he departed from Charleston, on his last 
mission to Washington, that he broke out in warm, glowing and 
loving eulogy of Massachusetts and Boston, referring to the 
time, when Josiah Quincy came as a missionary from Massa- 
chusetts to Charleston and South Carolina, to enlist the descend- 
ants of the Huguenots with the descendants of the Puritans, in 
the Boston tea party, in the coming struggle for American in- 
dependence, which then cast its great shadow before— dwelling. 



8 



witli evident pleasure, on the ancient ties, political and social, 
which once united the two sister commonwealths and the two 
sister cities, and discoursing eloquently on the affinities which 
yet obtained between them, in conservatism, in hospitality, and 
in social elegance and refinement. 

Let such principles and feelings — such as animated the bo- 
soms of the dead Webster and Calhoun, and such as yet ani- 
mate the bosom of the living EVerett, be cherished and imitated, 
and the Union will indeed be perpetual — realizing the loftiest 
and happiest destiny for itself — with the two oceans for its 
longitudinal, and the North Pole and the Isthmus of Darienfor 
its latitudinal boundaries — civilizing, christianizing and peo- 
pling the American continent, and, by its glorious example and 
influence, regenerating the human race. 

Under the inspiration of the occasion and the place, and of 
this glorious and lustrous presence of patriotism, intelligence 
and beauty, and in the language of the Union anthem of a gifted 
son of New England, (the Rev. Dr. Samuel Oilman,) who has 
made the sunny South his home, I would say, this day, from a 

full heart — 

Dear to us the South's fair land — 
Dear the central mountain band — 
Dear New England's rocky strand — 
Dear the prairi'd West ! 

In conclusion, and in renewed reference to the great and la- 
mented dead, I would suggest that a common memorial, in the 
shape of a work of art, so perfect in design and execution as to 
challenge and command the admiration of the world, should 
rise to perpetuate the memory, worth and services of the illus- 
trious trio, so alike in life and in death — emanating either from 
the nation at large, or from the three States, more immedi- 
ately concerned, as alike honored and alike bereaved. I would, 
therefore, propose as a sentiment — 

Clay, Wkbster, Calhoun! — Let a group of statuary, chi- 
selled in Parian marble, perpetuate their memory at the national 
capital; or let Kentucky, Massachusetts and South Carolina 
pile a common monument to the illustrious three, at Ashland, 
Marshfield, or Fort Hill, to awaken the admiration and kindle 
the emulation of posterity, " till suns shall set and rise no more." 








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